


To Hook a Crook

by twilight_shades



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Leonard Snart Lives, M/M, Nicknames, Time Shenanigans, Wooing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-30
Updated: 2017-07-30
Packaged: 2018-12-08 20:01:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11653710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twilight_shades/pseuds/twilight_shades
Summary: Len finds out that Raymond is trying to woo him.





	To Hook a Crook

Len tracks down Mick. Mick is observant and he isn’t stupid, he just usually doesn’t really engage his mind if he doesn’t need or want to think about something. Len doesn’t truly understand it, but apparently it’s ‘restful’. Len, though, his mind is generally fully engaged, but not necessarily on what’s in front of him. It has become very obvious that he’s missed something, so when he finds Mick, Len asks, “What the hell is going on?”

“Wondered how long it would take you to notice,” Mick rumbles with a smirk.

Len rolls his eyes at Mick’s amusement. “Well?”

“Haircut likes you. He’s trying to soften you up so you’ll say yes when he eventually asks you out.”

“He’s _wooing_ me?”

Mick grimaces at the word, but nods.

“He could’ve just asked.”

“You would have said no.”

“Of course I would have.”

“But now you’re thinking about it.”

That’s… true. The fact that Raymond thinks Len’s worth this much effort kind of intrigues Len, though he knows dating Raymond is a terrible idea. Raymond’s all about the long-term relationships (and engagements) and Len, well, he’s not sure he’s had anything last longer than his first. It was a junior high thing, so it wasn’t even a real relationship, but it was maybe the last completely innocent thing that Len had experienced. He had been thirteen and it had lasted two whole months. “Hmm,” Len says noncommittally.

Mick’s not fooled though. “Whatever. He surprised me. Just when I thought he was dumber than a box rocks about people, he does something like that. Caught your interest now. Smart.”

“Shut up, Mick.”

Mick laughs. At Len.

Len stalks away.

“Snart.” Mick’s voice stops him before he can get the door to open.

“What?” Len asks, irritated as hell.

Mick’s expression goes serious. “He could be good for you.”

“He doesn’t want _me_ ,” Len says and he can’t quite figure out it why comes out sounding pained. Len clears his throat, and says more evenly, “Not really.”

Mick squints at him, looking puzzled.

Len gestures to himself. “This me, the one that I am here, isn’t real. Or, well, it’s just a part. It’s not the whole, you know that.”

“How long’ve we known each other?” Mick asks abruptly.

“More than thirty years.”

“I’m going to say this and you’re not going to believe me, not yet, but you will. Because I know you and you know that. So, here it is: you are more this you than you think you are.”

“Mick,” Len says, exasperated, because, no, he doesn’t believe Mick.

“No, you’ve made me talk and _think_ way too much already. Go away now and _you_ think about everything,” Mick rumbles out, annoyed.

“Mick!”

Mick just points at the door.

Len leaves and he doesn’t kick Mick’s door like a little kid throwing a tantrum. Much.

~~~

Len thinks and argues with himself. It takes a two days (and maybe a vindictive tightening of everything of Raymond’s with a screw-on top that Len can find – Raymond started all of this after all) before he’s ready to concede that maybe Mick’s not completely wrong.

So, the next time Raymond offers Len a seat, he accepts it (Metal Boy frowns, Mick grunts, Animal Girl looks confused, Sara gives Len an assessing look, Stein doesn’t notice, and Jax doesn’t care). The next time Raymond brings something back for Len when they do separate parts of a mission, he thanks him and takes it (Jax raises his eyebrows, Mick grunts, Animal Girl gives Raymond a smile – someone must have explained something, Metal Boy frowns deeply, Sara gives Raymond an assessing look, and Stein still doesn’t notice). And the next time Raymond tries to take care of him, the thing that made Len aware of this whole thing in the first place, Len lets him (Sara smiles, Mick grunts, Animal Girl nods like something has been decided, Stein again doesn’t notice, Jax shrugs, and Metal Boy walks out of the room).

Len finds Metal Boy later and asks, “Do we have a problem?”

Metal Boy looks at him and says angrily, “Yes.”

Len thinks they had better hash it out now. “Well?”

“You killed Amaya. And Mick.”

And that is not at all what he was expecting, plus what? “What?”

“Everybody is so happy you’re back from the dead or whatever it was you were, and they don’t want you to feel bad or anything, but the Legion of Doom went back and got an earlier version of you. And you helped them. Not only did you help them, you froze Amaya and shattered her and then when you decided Mick was too _soft_ , you killed him, too. And it was a you from only a few years before and I don’t care that Mick erased your memory of it, you did it, and I don’t care what the Legion told you, if you could kill Mick, a guy you known for so long, a _partner_ you’ve had for so long, what’s to stop you from doing it again?”

Len had been told about the Legion of Doom, but there had never been any mention of an earlier him. Though there had been some holes in the story. Still. “What?”

“You can check with Gideon.”

“I will check with Gideon because obviously something happened. But that wasn’t me.”

“Oh, you’ve changed, huh? You’re a better person now?”

“Maybe,” Len scowls at him for making him admit that, “but that’s not what I meant. I would never kill Mick, so it wasn’t me,” Len says, conviction ringing in his tone.

Metal Boy at least seems to be thinking it over when Len leaves.

~~~

Len has a headache. He’d gone over the whole thing a few times with Gideon and then started working through possibilities. Unfortunately, given time travel, alternate earths, and metahumans, there are actually endless options. And it’s not like he can rule the really bizarre ones out, what with the Legion of Doom’s members, violently psychotic to a one. Plus, Gideon’s snarky artificial ass is not being very helpful (he appreciates the humor, but not the lack of cooperation). 

Finally, he allows her to do the most thorough brain scans she can. It’s difficult. He’d only let them do the bare minimum when they’d gotten him back. He and Oculus connected at some point during the explosion, which was maybe the reason he was able to come back, but he now has an almost automatic wariness for physical interaction with technologies. Except, maybe, for his cold gun (well, his new and improved cold gun). Even though he’s still a little peeved at both Raymond and Mick for what happened to his old one, he’s also a little relieved. Watching Raymond build a new one very closely made him familiar with it, he has an… intimate knowledge of its components and how it works and so he doesn’t have to repress an instinctively cautious reaction to it.

Len feels smug when Gideon admits that whoever the Legion of Doom had had with them, it wasn’t him (okay, she says it’s highly unlikely, a 1.52% probability) and confirms (with 99.76% certainty) that he is the one who Rip recruited (with the less detailed scans, she was only able to conclude that with 89.93% certainty, which had been good enough for everyone, though Stein had maybe twitched a bit). And Gideon starts helping in earnest.

Eobard Thawne is a douche. Gideon agrees. Thawne (likely) made a deliberately unstable time remnant of, well, Len, back in 2014. One Thawne could fairly easily manipulate. After Mick dropped the remnant off, the remnant was destroyed by… someone (Len thinks it might have been the Pilgrim, but he’s really not sure how that would work – time travel just does not conform much to logic).

Len finds everyone else all sitting down to a meal. Raymond perks up when he comes in the room. And, okay, that’s kind of nice. Len gives the man a smile. The he clears his throat to get everyone’s attention and when he has it, he says gesturing to Metal Boy, “So, Metal Boy, here-“

“Hey!” Metal Boy objects.

Well, perhaps he’s deserving of better nickname, he did, after all, give Len information he was lacking, which led Len down a path to answers. “Fine, Steelhead, here, let me know about some things that got left out of the stories about the Legion of Doom.”

Everyone, even Animal Girl, glares at Steelhead.

Steelhead scowls at Len. Len is very amused, maybe he can be a bit more generous. “Don’t be too hard on Hey, Wood. I’m not that fond of being out of the know.”

Mick’s still gives Heywood a narrow-eyed look, before turning to Len. “It wasn’t really you. They… messed with you.”

“No, no, no, it _really_ wasn’t me,” Len says and explains what he and Gideon had found.

There are all kinds of questions from almost everyone. Animal Girl just seems to accept that it wasn’t him (of course, even when she thought it had been him, she hadn’t seemed to hold a grudge). Len thinks he may have to like her, dammit. She was pretty good to Mick too, while Len was gone. That’s annoying because he’ll have to come up with a more respectful nickname for her, now. He’d liked ‘Animal Girl’, it lent itself so well to sneering. He could probably just go with Vixen, enough innuendo in his voice and it would irritate that crap out of Steelhead, but no, he’ll just give it a little twist, Fox. Anyway, he answers to the best of his knowledge and then lets Gideon take over. Len steals Raymond’s plate, which, for some reason, makes Raymond light up. Len catches Mick watching him. Mick tilts his head and Len rolls his eyes and huffs, but acknowledges with a head bob that Mick was at least partly right. Mick’s eyes go sharp and he tips his chin up, self-satisfied, and Len sighs, Mick is such a gloater. Len finds Raymond has been watching the exchange avidly. Now that Len is aware, it’s disconcerting how very much Raymond seems to be interested in Len and everything he does. What’s more disconcerting, though, is how much Len is coming to enjoy it.

~~~

Len is off in a small room on the Waverider. It’s not very accessible and seems like a strange place to put a room. He wonders if it’s just extra storage or it’s ever been used to hide something. He’s sort of waiting for Raymond to track him down. It’s become a bit of a game. Len is more restless than he used to be and tends to wander the ship when there’s nothing going on, finding all of the nooks and crannies he didn’t his first go around. But he’ll end up in the engine room, in a cargo bay, in the vents, in the room where Gideon generates clothes and props, in the kitchen and dining area, in medical (that one not often), the captain’s office, the bridge, wherever, and at some point Raymond will track him down.

There are footsteps nearby, then a bang and soft, “Ow!” as Raymond comes through the low doorway. He’s rubbing his head with a pained expression.

“Raymond.”

“Hey. What is this place?”

“Narnia,” Len deadpans.

“You’ve read those books?” Raymond asks enthusiastically.

“Not totally illiterate.”

“Oh, no, I didn’t mean that. Of course I didn’t. I just didn’t think they’d be your thing. Though, really, I don’t know why, the White Witch seems totally up your alley, not that I think you’re like that or anything. Um, anyway, no, I didn’t mean to make you think that I thought that, really-“ Raymond breaks off when he catches the Len’s smirk. “Oh, you were teasing.”

“Yes.”

“Sometimes I don’t catch it when people do that.”

“I know. I should probably apologize.”

Raymond looks at him doubtfully and then laughs a little. “You should, but you’re not going to, right?”

“Very good, Raymond.”

“I like how you say my name, when you aren’t being all mocking about it.”

“I know that, too.”

“Do you do it because of that?”

Sometimes. More times than Len would admit out loud. He shrugs a shoulder and lets his expression convey that it’s a possibility.

Raymond doesn’t seem at all discouraged by Len’s halfhearted response, smiling at Len and sort of bouncing in place. “So what are you doing in here?”

Len debates with himself and then decides maybe it’s time to actually talk about this. “Waiting for you.”

“Oh, were we supposed to meet?” Raymond asks, confused and anxious.

“No. But you usually come and find me at some point.”

“Oh. You, you noticed.”

“I did. I noticed a lot of things.”

“You figured it out, then.”

“Yes. Well, with a little help from Mick.”

“Oh, so you probably want me to stop, right?” Raymond asks unhappily.

“Figured it out about three weeks ago,” Len says mildly.

“I don’t know what that- Three weeks ago? But that’s when you really started letting me do things for you. _Oh_.”

Len gives a little nod of acknowledgement.

“Does that mean- What does that mean?”

“What do you want it to mean?”

“I feel like that’s a trap. Like, I’ll tell you and I’ll go too far, push too hard, and you’ll get sca-, you’ll think it’s too much and that’ll be it,” Raymond finishes glumly.

Len gives Raymond points for not quite saying Len’ll get scared. And Raymond does have a point, if he pulled out a ring and got down on a knee right now, Len would run. So, Len’s not really sure what to say to that.

Raymond expression is miserable. “I know a lot of people think I’m too eager, too earnest, too friendly, too happy, too _nice_. That _I’m_ too much.”

“You are very… Boy Scout-ish, but you’re also stubborn, self-righteous, oblivious, and sometimes very obnoxious,” Len says frankly.

“Was that supposed to make me feel better?”

“I _was_ pointing out your _good_ qualities.”

Raymond laughs.

“I am manipulative, deceitful, dangerous, unkind, dramatic, and prone to stubbornness myself.”

“You’re also loyal, brave, and self-sacrificing.”

“Hey! No need to get insulting, especially when I’m talking about _my_ good qualities. My point, Raymond, is that I know those things about you and I accept them for what they are, part of you. And I think, though I wasn’t sure at first, that you know those things about me and accept that they are part of me. You are not too much, not for me, though, yes, there are some actions you could take or some expectations you could have that would be too much. So, don’t. Instead, tell me the very basics of what you want, tell me the start and we’ll go from there.”

“Okay, I can do that. I want, I want you to like me. I want to start a romantic relationship with you.” Raymond looks at Len hopefully.

“Okay.”

“Okay, good job, Raymond, you have successfully articulated what you want or…?”

“Okay, good job, Raymond,” Len says.

Raymond’s face falls.

After a long pause, Len says, “And, I like you. And I suppose we can start a relationship.”

“That was kind of mean.”

“It was, wasn’t it?” Len smiles, a little proud.

“I guess that’s something I’ll have to get used to.”

“Me playing with you, teasing you? Whyever would you think that, Raymond?” Len asks roguishly.

Raymond smiles.

“Tell you what, Raymond, I’m very good at other types of teasing, too.”

Raymond’s eyes go dark. “I’d really like to get used to that.”

“So, how’s this going to work? On a time ship?”

“Oh, I know,” Raymond exclaims eagerly, “I could make you dinner. We could watch a movie.”

“What movie?”

“To Catch a Thief?” Raymond bounces a little, looking pleased with himself.

Len has to give him his due, though. “Good choice. Alright.”

“Okay, we could meet on the bridge at 8.”

“The bridge? Are you sure you don’t want me all to yourself in your room?” Len asks, voice velvety.

Raymond swallows hard. “That’s a much better idea, let’s do that.”

“I’ll be there, then.”

Raymond beams.

Len starts to leave the room, but turns back. Raymond is right behind him. Raymond looks confused when Len reaches up a hand to rest it on Raymond’s head, up until Len pushes down Raymond’s head as they go through the doorway, keeping him from hitting his head again.

“Thanks, I would’ve forgotten,” Raymond says a little sheepishly.

“I know,” Len says, shaking his head, wondering what he’s let himself in for.

~~~

Later as Len heads to Raymond’s room, it becomes fairly apparent that everyone knows. Not only has the rest of crew found some reason to be in the corridors, but most them have some sort of knowing expression (Mick’s is long-suffering, Steelhead’s is kind of sour, but grudgingly accepting, Fox’s seems unconditionally well-wishing, Jax’s looks more entertained than anything else, Sara’s is a little speculative, and Stein’s isn’t knowing so much as completely bewildered, apparently having been finally clued in). Len doesn’t acknowledge any of them, just starts planning an appropriate punishment (maybe not for Mick, he’s a horrible person to get into a prank war with – turns out that a Len without eyebrows is not at all intimidating, and maybe not for Fox, she hasn’t really done anything to warrant it). The cold gun can turn any floor into an ice rink. Len’s smirking as he gets to Raymond’s door. When the door opens and Raymond is standing by a veritable feast, nervous, but with a big, bright smile, Len thinks maybe he’ll just see if he can’t get Raymond to make some noise later on tonight when most of the crew should be settling down to sleep. Len’s always been good at multitasking.

The End


End file.
